Seeking Sickness

SHOW DESCRIPTION:

Why wouldn't you want to be screened to see if you're at risk for cancer, heart disease, or another potentially lethal condition? After all, better safe than sorry. Right? Not so fast, says this professor. Seeking Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening, where well-meaning practitioners and a profit-motivated industry offer to save our lives by exploiting our fears. He discusses that promoters of screening overpromise on its benefits and downplay its harms, which can range from the merely annoying to the life threatening. If you're facing a screening test for breast or prostate cancer, high cholesterol, or low testosterone, someone is about to turn you into a patient. You need to ask yourself one simple question: Am I ready for all the things that could go wrong?

GUEST BIO:

Alan Cassels is a pharmaceutical policy researcher at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. He studies how clinical research, information and experience on prescription drugs gets communicated to policy makers and consumers alike. He is the bestselling author of Seeking Sickness: Medical Screening and the Misguided Hunt for Disease.